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and the upper end of the Market (the Ng clan Ancestral Hall stood next to this road): this path went through the scattered houses of Tung Tau Village. To the south went a path which led to Sha Po Village, the lower end of the Market (where most of the shops owned by Nga Tsin Wai people were), and on to the pier. Of these, the path from the South-East Gate and on to Sha Tin Pass and the pier at Yuen Chau Kok was of major importance.
The Hong Kong Government did a traffic survey at Sha Tin Pass in late 1904, in an attempt to consider the profitability of the Railway then under planning20, 600 persons a day were recorded as crossing this pass, 280 of them "carrying goods" (a good deal of this trade was of fresh fish from Tolo Harbour being carried for sale at Kowloon City Market, and through the Market on to Hong Kong). This was a very summary and unsophisticated survey, and probably under-estimates the traffic (it took no account of the higher numbers passing on Kowloon City market days, and it is unlikely to have been undertaken from dawn to dusk), but still suggests very heavy traffic (even as it stands, it implies someone crossing the pass every daylight minute). The "goods carried” would have been carried in the standard loads of 75 catties (100 pounds), and hence at least 12½ tons of goods were being man-handled over the pass every day at that date.
Before the opening of the Railway in 1912, wealthy men would hire sedan chairs and coolies to carry them over the passes. Sha Tin village elders remember the Tai Wai man who was, before 1898, a clerk in the Sub-Magistracy at Kowloon City, and who travelled to and fro by sedan chair, and remember also that, if a villager called a doctor from Kowloon City to visit them, and then the doctor would insist on being carried over the mountains in a chair. All these would have passed under the walls of Nga Tsin Wai.
This constant heavy traffic along the paths around the village brought business to Nga Tsin Wai. Cakes (Cha Kwo), and tea could be sold to passers-by, and also fruit and so forth. It is not known if any of the Nga Tsin Wai villagers worked as chair-coolies - it is perhaps more likely that the chair-coolies mostly lived in the Market - but there can be no doubt that all this traffic brought a lot of business the way of the village.
J